REPLIES

The problem arises with people like those mentioned in the article. These ‘treasure hunters are only interested in making money. If they found another Ardagh Chalice they’d sooner melt it down and sell the metal than hand it over to a museum.

Pretty much all of our national monument legislation is a result of legal action in the past against treasure hunters, the ownership of hoards and treasure trove law. In the UK the crown has to pay for the bullion value of objects found by metal detectors.

Artefacts are pretty much just objects unless found in context in the ground… They’re only useful for comparison and dating.
For Archaeology they are worth so much more IF found in context in the ground. We can create maps etc. then and get much deeper analysis.
Treasure hunting defeats the point of archaeology.
Our laws here protect heritage not hide it!!!

the real value of these finds has actually already been lost as once they ripped from the ground their contextual info is loft fore ever. Archaeologists don’t want massive collections of shiny metal, we want to actually understand how people lived and for that we need to excavate the find spot which is not possible due to this man’s selfishness.

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